My tapes (and yours).

Fear has controlled me. It has kept me frozen in one place. It’s kept me in unhappy relationships and frankly, it’s sometimes stopped me from living my dreams. I’ve allowed it to control my decisions, to choose my directions, I’ve almost made it a person – sitting right next to me. Have you seen the movie – The Bird Man? His fear, his ego – spoke louder to him than those who loved him.

While with age, I’ve finally been able to identify it, I’m still not always able to deal with it. I’m a work in process.

I’ve tried lots of things – meditation, therapy, (drinking 🙂 ), etc., but these things don’t help me face those fears. Plus, fear can move from the mental to the physical – making us feel sick, becoming compulsive about things, spending too much money, cheating, …. You know what I’m talking about.

Why do we let something that’s not really us, control our actions? I don’t have an answer. I just know a few things:

First, we are solely responsible for the thoughts our minds produce. While we can’t stop our minds completely, we can (and should) control them and create the message we should be hearing.

Second, we can hit the “stop” button at any time. I’ve been working on taking a deep breath and hitting “delete” literally and figuratively. Sometimes our thoughts want to drag us away – but we often forget that we have all the power.

Of course, suffering and pain is inevitable and sometimes it will take every ounce of energy to not react to the messages we are hearing in our brain. Sometimes, we will just get lost in our thoughts and we just can’t beat ourselves up about it. Nothing is perfect.

The point here is that I’ve stayed in bad situations because of tapes I was playing – “I’m not good enough.” “This is as good as I deserve.” Had I really listened to the truth of the situation, of the importance of being honest with myself, I would have changed directions long before I did. But, my tapes were on max volume and I just must not have been ready.

All I know is this: the more I practice, the better I get at turning down the volume. Maybe I’ve not shut it off completely (and I likely never will), but at least I can identify it.

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. Eckhart Tolle

Friends, let’s not let it run our lives. Give it a shot with me. How bad can it be? Look, even if it hurts, we know it’s hurting for all the right reasons.